Texas can enforce a 2023 law that restricts some public drag shows, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
Senate Bill 12 prohibits drag performers from dancing suggestively or wearing certain prosthetics on public property or in front of children. The law would fine business owners $10,000 for hosting such performances, while those who violate the law could be hit with a Class A misdemeanor.
In September 2023, U.S. District Judge David Hittner declared the law unconstitutional, saying that it “impermissibly infringes on the First Amendment” and that it is “not unreasonable” to think it could affect activities like live theatre or dancing. More than two years later, a three-judge panel in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unblocked the law and returned the case to the district court.
As part of the ruling, the panel found that most of the plaintiffs — a drag performer, a drag production company and pride groups — failed to show that they intended to conduct a “sexually oriented performance,” and therefore, could not be harmed by the law. The ruling suggests that the federal judges don’t believe all drag shows are sexually explicit.
Critics of the ban have previously raised concerns that Republican lawmakers were portraying all drag performances as inherently sexual or obscene.
And while the law doesn’t have language explicitly referencing drag performances, SB 12’s original version specifically included them. Republican leaders have also made it clear that drag shows are the target.
“Texas Governor Signs Law Banning Drag Performances in Public. That’s right,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a post on X in June 2023.
Get a life you fracking evangelical conservatives 🤮
“Dancing suggestively”, in that context, can mean literally any sort of dance. It’s so broad as to be an effective ban on all drag shows, because any movement can suggest anything. They could see a drag performer simply stand up from a seated position on a chair with no music playing, call that “suggestive dancing”, then jail or fine them. Nothing changes.
Time to find out what the limit is, then. Because they will start banning the shows regardless of content or intent and that excuse won’t hold water any more.
Since when do these flag pissers care about nuance when it comes to something they don’t like. They will arrest everyone and it will be up to their victims to prove they did nothing wrong. The whole time the corrupt system and their lackeys will be engaged in a smear campaign.
I have a hard time believing that there are drag shows that violate the law.
Meanwhile, there are absolutely gun shows in Texas that violate the law.
In the laaaaand of the Naziiiiii,♫ ♪
And the hoooome of the depraaaaaved.♫ ♪
Removed by mod
Post this on your main account you fucking coward.
Wow, that’s quite the way to tell everyone you have no idea what you’re talking about.
I mean, just look at their comment history…
Senate Bill 12 prohibits drag performers from dancing suggestively or wearing certain prosthetics on public property or in front of children.
What part is he misunderstanding?
They’re missing the parts where it hasn’t been happening because it’s already illegal regardless of being drag or not, and also the part where the opposition to this bill is not actually arguing for the right to do so but instead that the wording is vague enough that it will be used against all drag by Republican prosecutors charging that all drag is inherently obscene and sexual.
Find one video proving that ever happened outside of ones own mind.
100% sure it doesn’t exist.
It seems this is the new texas republican strategy, ban things that are not a problem in the first place, if you see the propositions that were on their ballot this election you’ll see this in effect with their new targeted group, prop 16, which bans non-citizens from voting in the state…which they already can’t do and they have no evidence of them doing.
I imagine it’s mostly to scare their base to show up to election days so that they can get their other measures passed, which were mostly regressive tax bans & reforms that mostly help the wealthy.
